PRESS RELEASE

Arlington, VA, June 23, 2025 - CoStar Group (NASDAQ: CSGP) a leading provider of online real estate marketplaces, information and analytics in the commercial and residential property markets, today provided an update to the ongoing CREXi litigation, highlighting new details of how the account executives of the parasitic company have stolen, and continued to steal, CoStar’s intellectual property despite being embroiled in a pending lawsuit with CoStar.

Gene Boxer, CoStar’s General Counsel, said: “CoStar is prepared to take CREXi to trial for its international scheme of mass infringement. CREXi can no longer hide from its well-documented policy to copy and crop images from CoStar, and the mountains of evidence that its employees did just that. CREXi’s vain attempts to blame its broker customers have shriveled in the face of its own documents. And its makeweight antitrust claims, which will fail yet again, are nothing more than a sideshow. That CREXi takes no steps to curb the improper access by its employees to CoStar in 2025 underscores that court intervention is needed. We look forward to holding CREXi to account for its industrial-scale wrongdoing.”

What the facts show in detail is that CREXi, pursuant to its official “copy and crop” policy, used offshore agents in India and infringed thousands and thousands of CoStar copyrighted photographs by harvesting them from CoStar’s LoopNet site, and LoopNet brochures. CREXi tried to hide its egregious wrongdoing by taking screenshots of CoStar’s photographs and cropping out the CoStar watermark. The evidence of CREXi’s deliberate misconduct is overwhelming, from thousands of emails detailing CREXi’s wrongdoing, to direct testimony from former and current CREXi employees. CREXi could compete fairly with CoStar if it elected to do so. According to Forbes, as of 2022 CREXi was valued at a half billion dollars ($500 million) and is backed by major venture capital investors including Industry Ventures, Lerer Hippeau and Leon Capital. Just last year, CREXi’s founding investor estimated that CREXi will soon have a multi-billion-dollar valuation. But instead of using its vast resources appropriately, CREXi harvests CoStar content, deliberately piggybacking on a competitor.

Nick DeGiorgio, the cousin of CREXi CEO Mike DeGiorgio, acknowledged in writing to CREXi team members that they should not be harvesting listings from CoStar, but in the same email issued detailed instructions on exactly how to do that when necessary, telling them: “Understanding (at times) [that CoStar/LoopNet] is the only place you can find some of these listings, . . . YOU MUST TAKE A SCREENSHOT OF THE PHOTOS . . . TO ENSURE THAT THE WATERMARK LOGO IS REMOVED.” Dkt. 831-4, Ex. 46 (emphasis in original). Following this direction CREXi employees did just that: copying listings and cropping the CoStar logo from our copyrighted images to try to avoid being caught. Just a few weeks later, CREXi’s Manager of Business Operations, James Burton, replied “Yes [] sir!” when asked by a CREXi employee whether he could “screen shot and not include the LN [LoopNet] watermark.” Dkt. 831-4, Ex. 47. CREXi’s Chief Operating Officer, Eli Randel, and former Vice President of Revenue, Doug Shankman discussed that CREXi’s business model “revolve[d] around taking listings from LoopNet.” Dkt. 831-5, Ex. 78. And CREXi used offshore workers (who they labeled “girls”), proxy servers and what they called “BS” accounts to try to remain hidden from CoStar’s security protocols. Dkt. 909-3.

CREXi and its associates have a long history of targeting CoStar and alternative online marketplaces. Furthermore, the wrongdoing continues to this day.

• In 2016, CREXi and its CEO Mike DeGiorgio were sued for misappropriating trade secrets from Ten-X, now part of CoStar. CREXi was enjoined by the California courts, paid seven figures, and DeGiorgio issued a public apology.
• From 2019 to 2020, CREXi surreptitiously used credentials issued to legitimate subscribers to access and download content from the CoStar password-protected database. The head of CREXi’s New York office, Zachary Zlotnick, was a key player in the scheme, alongside Sam Hamlin, an Account Executive, and Ross Padfield, a Regional Director.
• In 2020, CREXi was sued by CoStar for mass infringement. That pending litigation, which involves the infringement of more than 46,000 images, is nearing trial.
• In 2023, a former commercial real estate marketplace, BiProxi, issued a press release, stating that it had evidence of CREXi accessing its website to collect data from listings without permission.
• CREXi’s founding investor, Leon Capital, was sued by CoStar for hacking into CoStar’s password-protected database. That case resulted in Leon Capital, and its affiliate Tiltbot, being permanently enjoined by a federal district court in 2024.
• From 2021 to 2025, CoStar has sent CREXi multiple cease-and-desist letters detailing CREXi’s ongoing infringement of CoStar copyrighted photographs.

Worse still, the attack on CoStar and its intellectual property has continued throughout 2025.

Earlier this year, yet another CREXi Account Executive, Chris Kelliny, sitting in CREXi’s offices in California, repeatedly hacked into CoStar’s database, using a password issued to a legitimate subscriber, and accessed over 1,000 CoStar Property records. Photographs of some of the access, and attempted access, from CREXi’s L.A. offices in 2025 are depicted below:

LinkedIn:

CoStar has, of course, taken technological steps to block the hack. CoStar initially blocked the IP address associated with Mr. Kelliny’s access. It was then forced to suspend the subscriber’s account entirely when Mr. Kelliny circumvented the block and continued to access the database from CREXi’s offices using a different IP address. CoStar subsequently sent a cease-and-desist letter to CREXi. CREXi, as expected, obfuscated, and refused to answer why—whatever the reason Kelliny was engaging in the hack—CREXi had not blocked access to CoStar’s websites at its offices—a measure CoStar took years ago.

The Department of Justice and Congress have been alerted about the latest hack emanating from CREXi’s offices. Despite the significant resources required to hold CREXi accountable for its unscrupulous actions, CoStar will take every action necessary to protect its intellectual property.

News Media Contact:

Matthew Blocher
CoStar Group 
(202) 346-6775
mblocher@costargroup.com

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About CoStar Group

CoStar Group (NASDAQ: CSGP) is a global leader in commercial real estate information, analytics, online marketplaces and 3D digital twin technology. Founded in 1986, CoStar Group is dedicated to digitizing the world’s real estate, empowering all people to discover properties, insights, and connections that improve their businesses and lives.

CoStar Group’s major brands include CoStar, a leading global provider of commercial real estate data, analytics, and news; LoopNet, the most trafficked commercial real estate marketplace; Apartments.com, the leading platform for apartment rentals; and Homes.com, the fastest-growing residential real estate marketplace. CoStar Group’s industry-leading brands also include Matterport, a leading spatial data company whose platform turns buildings into data to make every space more valuable and accessible, STR, a global leader in hospitality data and benchmarking, Ten-X, an online platform for commercial real estate auctions and negotiated bids and OnTheMarket, a leading residential property portal in the United Kingdom.

CoStar Group’s websites attracted over 130 million average monthly unique visitors in the first quarter of 2025, serving clients around the world. Headquartered in Arlington, Virginia, CoStar Group is committed to transforming the real estate industry through innovative technology and comprehensive market intelligence. From time to time, we plan to utilize our corporate website as a channel of distribution for material company information. For more information, visit CoStarGroup.com.